Reading Time! at The Ugly Frog (tm)

MY THOUGHTS ON "SEA AND SARDINIA"

My Thoughts on: D H LAWRENCE'S "SEA AND SARDINA"

4 November 2026

Greetings Froggies! I hope that your autumnal season is off to a good start and that you had a GREAT halloween! I don't know that I had a great Halloween, but did enjoy things leading up to it like a zombie walk, cider mill, scary movies, and live theatre as well. But you didn't come to this page to read about that, did you? Noooooo. You came to this page to see what my thoughts were on the classic book "Sea and Sardina" by D H Lawrence. I read the Penguin Twentieth Century Classics publication of it. I scored it at John King Books in Detroit not long before I started into it. If you have not been to that used book wonderland, you really need to go there. It is 4 floors and quite an experience. I never go beyond the classic literature section. Which smartly they put right up in front because the best is classic literature! hahahaha. . . book snob. I know I am, cannot help it. . . . I started Sea and Sardina on Oct 25th and Finished it on Nov 3rd. It is approximately 192 pages. It was published in 1921. The back of the book says he and his wife travelled there. It is not listed as a memoir or nonfiction however, it is listed as just "literature" on the back. This is an edited copy and I read a little on that in the intro is it actually edited things back into the book, as I recall. Anyway, regardless of that, I read it. I usually prefer unedited and unabridged versions although I am going to lighten up on that bend going forward; I must, because many of the books in my personal collection / library are edited versions by either penguin or oxford or whatnot. I wonder how you are feeling toward edited v unabridged / unedited classic works? My concern is that sometimes the editor will edit out things simply because they disagree with them politically or perhaps they are offensive in today's standards but were not necessarily so at the time it was written. Given some of the passages in this book, I do not feel either of those are concerns at all with this one! I will leave it at that and leave it for you to discover and try to figure out which ones I am talking about should you choose to read the book.

I usually do not gravitate toward memoirs or biographies or travel books. I have read some, maybe more than some, in my continual reading of classic literature since 2016: some that come to mind are In Patagonia, A Tramp Abroad, Three Men in a Boat and on the Bummell (I shortened the title there on that one, was really comical by the way!), surely there are others but that is enough to mention in passing. None of them made it into my favorites of all time. Not a coincidence, right? I just told you I do not really gravitate toward those kind of books. This one I enjoyed though just as much as all the others. I am one half italian, sicilian to be more particular about it, and so that made it a little more interesting than otherwise. So that is what I will talk about first as to what I liked about the book. I liked his commentary on the scilian people (not favorable in the least in the beginning and the italian people generally) and then in his comparisons between the Sardinian People and the Italian People. This was noted on the back of one of it's highlights and I agree with that. It really was enjoyable to read his descriptions of the people he and his wife encountered on their travels on the steamships, the trains, etc. Particularyl the descriptions of their clothes and mannerisms. In addition the interplay of the time period (post WWI) and him being from England and his wife of German descent and how that played out in their interactions with the various people they bumped into along the journey. I could imagine that today, a traveler from the US, with our certain lightning rod of a president, how when traveling overseas people might view one as the embodiment of the US itself. I liked that observation he made and agreed with him that, when traveling you are an individual, you are not the country you are from personified. I loved that about the book. Other times in the book I found him quite disagreeable. The first part of the book, it seemed all he did was complain and I was thinking: Man! you are on a steamship cruising in the mediteranean to an island! What are you complaining for!?

The back of the book says something like it is artful and resembles a painting of sorts. So when I started reading it, I expected very colourful and vivid descriptions of the scenery and people; but all I got was an arrogant and unhappy and critical traveller withwhom I would least want to travel. Later on, the the descriptions of that nature with regard to the people (mostly) came in bursts every now and then. I felt it did not live up to that description. See, that is why I usually do not read introductions or backs of books. They lead you to think one way and then either you might be mislead to view it that way, or you will be disappointed when you read it and find that it is not quite all that.

As an avid reader of world history, I enjoyed the interplay of the post-WWI situation with their travel and how it impacted people's views of him and his wife as they made their way from Italy to Sardinia and back to Italy.

I also enjoyed that a few times it literally made me laugh out loud. That's always a plus! Right?

What I didn't so much like about the book? Well, I already said, it's a travel type book and I do not really gravitate to those. It used the word "sardonic" at least two times. That in itself is an outrage. Other than that, nothing really negative stands out; other than my not liking the idea of traveling with him (but that is usually a good thing for me when a book makes me dislike the character, like Anna Karenina for instance, couldn't stand her in the book, but that is probably what landed that book in my favorites of all time and even ahead of another favorite of all time War and Peace by the same author. So not a drawback at all really.

Now I am embarking on another score from John King Books in Detroit from that same book buying adventure: "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel" by George Meredith. This one is a Modern Library Classics publication of it. There is no back blurb for me to read on that one as it doesn't have the dust jacket. Furthermore, there is no introduction to contaminate my thoughts going into it! Isn't that GREAT! Perfect! . . . Anyway, hope you enjoyed my thoughts here on Sea and Sardinia and have a great weekend coming up! Well, depending on when you read this.

Discussion / Thought Questions Inspired by my Reading of this Book:

Do you like travel stories? Have any that actually made it into your favorites of all time?
If you have been to Italy, how is driving on the roads?
How do you feel about the death penalty?
How do you feel about newspapers today?
Have a dog? What tricks does it know?
Do you believe that humans have one soul or multiple souls?